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We have to ask, that is, how Matter, this entity of ceaseless
flux constituting the physical mass of the universe, could serve
towards the immortality of the Kosmos.
And our answer is "Because the flux is not outgoing": where there
is motion within but not outwards and the total remains
unchanged, there is neither growth nor decline, and thus the
Kosmos never ages.
We have a parallel in our earth, constant from eternity to
pattern and to mass; the air, too, never fails; and there is
always water: all the changes of these elements leave unchanged
the Principle of the total living thing, our world. In our own
constitution, again, there is a ceaseless shifting of particles-
and that with outgoing loss- and yet the individual persists for
a long time: where there is no question of an outside region, the
body-principle cannot clash with soul as against the identity and
endless duration of the living thing.
Of these material elements- for example- fire, the keen and
swift, cooperates by its upward tendency as earth by its
lingering below; for we must not imagine that the fire, once it
finds itself at the point where its ascent must stop, settles
down as in its appropriate place, no longer seeking, like all the
rest, to expand in both directions. No: but higher is not
possible; lower is repugnant to its Kind; all that remains for it
is to be tractable and, answering to a need of its nature, to be
drawn by the Soul to the activity of life, and so to move to in a
glorious place, in the Soul. Anyone that dreads its falling may
take heart; the circuit of the Soul provides against any
declination, embracing, sustaining; and since fire has of itself
no downward tendency it accepts that guiding without resistance.
The partial elements constituting our persons do not suffice for
their own cohesion; once they are brought to human shape, they
must borrow elsewhere if the organism is to be maintained: but in
the upper spheres since there can be no loss by flux no such
replenishment is needed.
Suppose such loss, suppose fire extinguished there, then a new
fire must be kindled; so also if such loss by flux could occur in
some of the superiors from which the celestial fire depends, that
too must be replaced: but with such transmutations, while there
might be something continuously similar, there would be, no
longer, a Living All abidingly self-identical.
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